Authorities have made another step toward identifying the child whose remains were found in the Dixon area last October.

On Monday, Pulaski County Sheriff Ron Long released a forensic drawing of what experts believe the victim looked like.

“Over the past eight months, this agency has been diligently working on the case, with the first priority being to identify the deceased,” Long said. “This week marks another significant step in concluding this endeavor, with the completion of a forensic artist’s depiction of the victim after a model of the skull was constructed.

The images depict facial reconstruction, completed by a National Center for Missing and Exploited Children Forensic Artist, showing what the child may have looked like.

The depictions show one of a male and the other of a female, due to the sex being undetermined after DNA analysis. Since child’s the lower jaw could not by found, the drawing is an approximation.

“The completion of the drawings, along with information received from the forensic analysis of the skeletal remains, highly elevates the possibility of identifying this young victim.”

In March, a report from the Center for Human Identification – Laboratory of Forensic Anthropology in Fort Worth, Texas said that the skeletal remains were likely that of an 8- to 13-year-old child, and most likely of Mestizo ancestry, which is a mixture of southwest American Indian/Hispanic and Caucasian descent. However, the analysis was unable to determine the sex of the deceased individual.

The remains were originally discovered around 2 p.m. on Oct. 26, 2013, roughly 1⁄4-mile south of Highway D and Highway 28, also known as "Dogpatch Intersection," on private property off of Highway 28. Long said that the remains were found roughly 30 feet from the road.

Long said authorities believe the victim died one to three years ago.

In addition to Pulaski County Sheriff’s Department Detectives, Long said that assistance has been received from numerous outside agencies, including the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children (NCMEC), the Mid-States Organized Crime Information Center (MOCIC), the Center for Human Identification (University of N. Texas), and numerous other Federal, State and Local law enforcement agencies.

If you have any information about this case, please contact the Pulaski County Missouri Sheriff’s Department at 1-573-774-6196, or the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children at 1- 800-843-5678 (1-800-THE-LOST).